Israel and Palestinian Authority, People and Society

Golan Heights, Yafo, birth rate, largest cities, East Jerusalem

The estimated population of Israel in 2002, including residents of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, was 6,029,529 number. Population density, including the area of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, was 275 persons per sq km (712 per sq mi). Israel is one of the most urbanized countries in the world. Some 91 percent of the population lives in communities of more than 2,000 people, and over half of Israel’s population lives in the metropolitan areas of its three largest cities, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv-Yafo, and Haifa.

More than one-third of the world’s Jewish population lives in Israel, where they make up 82 percent of the people. Arabs, most of whom are Muslims, make up almost the entire remainder of the population. Because the birth rate is greater for Arabs than for Jews, the Arab proportion of the population more than doubled between 1950 and the late 1990s.